Raising money for charity has been an important part of eNL life for many years. The charities we have supported range from the largest and well known organisations such as MacMillan Cancer Support and The Prince’s Trust, through to the smaller local charities and hospices that have touched some us personally. Being part of the Pertemps Network Group, we are lucky enough to get what we have raised matched by the Group, meaning twice as much going to these charities.
There are so many worthy causes out there that we now ask our employees to nominate their chosen charity at the beginning of the year and four are selected at random to be our “quarterly charity”. Dress down Friday is our regular weekly fund raiser, with all members of staff paying a £1 for the privilege of wearing our jeans and trainers. We supplement this with a range of events, usually led by the person who nominated the charity.
In the past we have had team members jumping out of planes, abseiling off buildings, doing sponsored bike rides and sleeping rough – all in the name of charity! The most popular and successful money raisers are without a doubt food related – the eNL Bake Offs and Buffets are legendary within the office (and the businesses we share our building with)!
Here’s a brief review of what we have been involved with so far this year and what we have planned for the second half of the year:
Championing “the right for every baby born premature or sick to receive the best care by supporting families, campaigning for change and supporting professionals, and enabling life-changing research.”
It being a bit cold and miserable in the first few months of the year, our fundraising centred around a huge cake and baked goods sale, spread over a couple of weeks. Highlights included the cheesecakes, brownies and, of course, the now famous samosas!
In addition to the cake sale, one of our locum consultants and her mum generously gave up what must have been hours to cook us an amazing Biriyani, with accompanying pakoras and onion bhajis, which we happily all bought for our lunch one Friday!
Total raised - £444
April – June 2018 – Leukaemia Care https://www.leukaemiacare.org.uk/
“Leukaemia Care is a national blood cancer support charity. We are dedicated to ensuring that anyone affected by blood cancer receives the right information, advice and support.”
We were feeling a bit more energetic as the year moved into Spring and, in addition to the usual home made cakes and samosas, we embarked on more sports related activities. The first of these was the “eNL Marathon”. Now, admittedly, we’re not all regular runners, but we can walk! So essentially we split the traditional marathon distance between us all and either ran or walked our allotted distance on a relay basis. We were fitter than expected and, like typical recruiters, we smashed our targets, finishing ahead of schedule and managing to complete more than 30 miles!
Then in June came the World Cup, so we organised a sweepstake, each contributing a few £ so we could draw teams out of a hat. The holder of the winning team received some of the pot and the majority went to charity.
Total raised - £354
What’s next?
We are supporting MacMillan Cancer Support during July, August and September. In particular, we will be part of the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning and a Dance Marathon is being talked about….
In Quarter 4, we will be supporting Mind – activities yet to be decided but I’m sure there will be some Halloween and Christmassy themed events!
